Quote

The idea that Bentham and Mill were maximizers is the greatest stretch of all. They were progressivists, committed to improving the societies in which they lived, not utopian maximizers.

Dale Jamieson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dale Jamieson
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: October 21
Academic
Jurist
University Teacher
Sioux City
Iowa
Stretch
Societies
Improving
Committed
Lived
Greatest
Mill
Idea
Mills
Ideas
Utopian

More quotes by Dale Jamieson

Image
Environmental philosophy just is philosophy full stop. It only sprung up as distinct subfield because mainstream philosophy was ignoring some of the most important philosophical challenges of our time.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If you have a flat, fixed view of state interest then it is difficult to understand why some states adopt aggressive climate change policies, even when that risks economically disadvantaging them, and other states do not even when it would be in their economic interests to do so.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Even if Bill McKibben were to become dictator, future generations would suffer because of the carbon we had already emitted.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If you're interested in doing something about climate change as we all should be, all of us who care about future people and creatures that will inhabit this world. Then buying a Prius is a good thing but an even better thing would be to be on the streets demanding urgent action from the United States' Congress.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The only way major change in environmental policy is going to happen, the only way, is if there is a very strong, very active popular movement that demands it and such a movement would be unparalleled because it would be a popular movement that says, Raise our taxes so that we change our behavior.
Dale Jamieson
Image
When it comes to climate change it's all the usual barriers: greed, mendacity, ignorance, short-sightedness and so on, manifest in the extreme power of corporations, the weakness of government, and the indifference of citizens.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Some philosophers have begun writing sympathetically about predator elimination as a way of reducing animal suffering. From an environmental perspective this is somewhere between naïve and potentially disastrous.
Dale Jamieson
Image
I think that by the middle of this century people will still be eating meat (though less), and their meat will mostly be produced in factories through synthetic processes, cell cultures, and so on.
Dale Jamieson
Image
It's true that climate change is an unprecedented problem so it's not surprising that it's so difficult to address.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.
Dale Jamieson
Image
It's obvious that there are vast variety of consequentialist views, depending on what we think goodness consists in, what our notion of consequence is, and what level (or levels) of human action we think the principle should be applied.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The seas will continue to rise no matter who gets elected president.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If we're interested in the continuation of the human experiment we need to focus on resilience and coping with change (whether natural or anthropogenic) rather than living as if God or nature has given us a nice, orderly, calm, Babbit-like existence.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!
Dale Jamieson
Image
Most process philosophy is historicist (e.g., Hegel) and not concerned with deep time. Maybe Whitehead is an exception. He may be a really important philosopher for all I know. I've never been able to read him.
Dale Jamieson
Image
We're highly adaptable and have developed some powerful systems of representation.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If you look globally you see a patchwork of jurisdictions (nations, states, provinces, cities) that have taken aggressive action on climate change, and a patchwork of jurisdictions that have not. These various policies reflect the politics of each jurisdiction and the values of its citizens.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Ethical systems are fundamentally conservative and primarily directed towards regulating interactions within communities.
Dale Jamieson